Harold Reading Medal
This medal is presented to the most influential and/or outstanding publication by a current or recent postgraduate student (normally within 2 years of doctoral award) from their PhD project in the field of sedimentology.
The medal is awarded at the AGM. It is expected that this PhD research will have been presented at the BSRG AGM, but this is not a strict criterion for nomination. The Awards Committee do not take metrics such as Journal Impact Factor into account when assessing the submissions.
The paper should have been written primarily by the student (first author) and be based on their own research with the normal expected input from supervisors. The Awards Committee do not take metrics such as Journal Impact Factor into account when assessing the submissions.
Award Nomination Calls
The award nomination calls are announced and circulated through the BSRG mailing list, website and social media at the beginning of autumn (typically September). The nomination deadline is typically at the start of November each year and nominations are submitted to the BSRG Awards officer (brian.burnham@abdn.ac.uk).
If you would like to nominate an individual for the Harold Reading Medal, please send a pdf copy of their paper and a brief letter of support outlining the reasons you feel that the paper represents an excellent contribution.
The Harold Reading Medal will be announced at the AGM.
Analysis of past awards identifies clear issues in relation to gender balance (11% female: 89% male) and underrepresentation with regards to ethnicity and race (4% BAME: 96% white). Please do take the time to think about this and to nominate someone deserving for the awards.
Past Winners
2025: William Taylor (University of Manchester) – Unidirectional and combined transitional flow bedforms: controls on process and distribution in submarine slope settings (Sedimentology)
2023: Cole McCormick (Penn State) – Basin scale evolution of zebra textures in fault-controlled hydrothermal dolomite bodies: Insights from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (Basin Research)
2022: Mostafizur Rahman (Imperial College London) – Virtual outcrop-based analysis of channel and crevasse splay sandstone body architecture in the Middle Jurassic Ravenscar Group, Yorkshire, NE England (Journal of the Geological Society)
2021: Albina Gilmullina (University of Bergen) – Linking sediment supply variations and tectonic evolution in deep time, source-to-sink systems – The Greater Barents Sea Basin (GSA Bulletin)
2020: Jack Stacey (University of Manchester) – Burial dolomitization driven by modified seawater and basal aquifer-sourced brines: insights from the Middle and Upper Devonian of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (Basin Research)
2020: Gregory Smith (University of Hull) – A bedform phase diagram for dense granular currents (Nature Communications)
2019: Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza (Imperial College London) – Ecological niche modelling does not support climatically-driven dinosaur diversity decline before the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction (Nature Communications)
2018: Euan Soutter (University of Manchester) – Giant submarine landslide triggered by Palaeocene mantle plume activity in the north Atlantic (Geology)
2017: Daniel Collins (Imperial College London) – Tidal dynamics and mangrove carbon sequestration during the Oligo-Miocene in the South China Sea (Nature Communications)
2016: Jan de Leeuw (Utrecht University) – Morphodynamics of submarine channel inception revealed by new experimental approach (Nature Communications)
2015: Marco Fonnesu (University College Dublin) – Short length-scale variability of hybrid event beds and its applied significance (Marine and Petroleum Geology)
2014: Michael Clare (National Oceanography Centre Southampton) – Distal turbidites reveal a common distribution for large (>0.1 km3) submarine landslide recurrence (Geology)
2013 - Jessica Ross (University of Leeds) – An integrated model of extrusive sand injectites in cohesionless sediments (Sedimentology)
2012: Michael Salter (Manchester Metropolitan University)
2011: Amandine Prélat (Liverpool University)